Structure of Disk-dominated Galaxies. II. Color Gradients and Stellar Population Models

By L. MacArthur, S. Courteau, Eric F. Bell, J. Holtzman. 2004

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We investigate optical and near-IR color gradients in a sample of 172 low-inclination galaxies spanning Hubble types S0-Irr. The colors are compared with stellar population synthesis models from which luminosity-weighted average ages and metallicities are determined. We explore the effects of different underlying star formation histories and additional bursts of star formation. Our results are robust in a relative sense under the assumption that our galaxies shared a similar underlying star formation history and that no bursts involving more than ∼10% of the galaxy mass have occurred in the past 1-2 Gyr. Because the observed gradients show radial structure, we measure "inner" and "outer" disk age and metallicity gradients. Trends in age and metallicity and their gradients are explored as a function of Hubble type, rotational velocity, total near-IR galaxy magnitude, central surface brightness, and scale length. We find strong correlations in age and metallicity with Hubble type, rotational velocity, total magnitude, and central surface brightness in the sense that earlier-type, faster rotating, more luminous, and higher surface brightness galaxies are older and more metal-rich, suggesting an early and more rapid star formation history for these galaxies. The increasing trends with rotational velocity and total magnitude level off for Vrot ≳ 120 km s-1 and MK ≲ -23 mag, respectively. This effect is stronger for metallicity (than age), which could reflect a threshold potential above which all metals are retained and thus metallicity saturates at the yield. Outer disk gradients are found to be weaker than the inner gradients as expected for a slower variation of the potential and surface brightness in the outer parts. We find that stronger age gradients are associated with weaker metallicity gradients. Trends in gradients with galaxy parameters are compared with model predictions: these trends do not agree with predictions of semianalytic models of hierarchical galaxy formation, possibly owing to the effect of bar-induced radial flows. The observed trends are in agreement with chemo-spectrophotometric models of spiral galaxy evolution based on CDM-motivated scaling laws but none of the hierarchical merging characteristics, implying a strong dependence of the star formation history of spiral galaxies on the galaxy potential and halo spin parameter.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

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Citations in the corpus

• Scaling Relations of Spiral Galaxies (2007, background): “4 Although 2MASS surface brightness profiles only reach K ∼ 20 mag arcsec−2, the 2MASS J −K color terms are still useful for the separation of redder and bluer disks since IR galaxy bulge and disk color gradients are already substantial after one disk scale length (MacArthur et al. 2004).”
• Structural Parameters of Thin and Thick Disks in Edge-on Disk Galaxies (2005, background): “4), a result of the strong radial color gradients seen in both our sample and in face-on galaxies (e.g., Bell & de Jong 2001; MacArthur et al. 2004).”
• The structure of galactic disks - Studying late-type spiral galaxies using SDSS (2006, background): “9) as seen by MacArthur et al. (2004) or de Jong (1996).”
• Environmental effects on satellite galaxies: the link between concentration, size and colour profile (2008, background): “The main reason for this is that the star formation history is strongly dependent on the surface mass density (Kauffmann et al. 2003; MacArthur et al. 2004; Bell & de Jong 2000), even more so than on the stellar mass.”
• MegaMorph - multiwavelength measurement of galaxy structure: complete Sersic profile information from modern surveys (2012, background): “…gradients in the stellar populations within spheroids (e.g., La Barbera & de Carvalho 2009; Suh et al. 2010) and discs (e.g., Bell & de Jong 2000; MacArthur et al. 2004; Tortora et al. 2010; Gonzalez-Perez et al. 2011) and centrally concentrated dust atten- uation (Driver et al. 2007; Masters et…”
• Forming disc galaxies in ΛCDM simulations (2006, methodology): “…also show that more massive late-type galaxies have older stellar populations than less massive late-type galaxies (Ferreras et al. 2004; MacArthur et al. 2004; Gallazzi et al. 2005), in possible contradiction with the fact that in CDM scenarios less massive haloes assemble (on average)…”
• Modeling the Panchromatic Spectral Energy Distributions of Galaxies (2013, background): “Bell & de Jong (2000) and MacArthur et al. (2004), amongst others, showed that age and metallicity vectors were nearly orthogonal in optical-NIR colors (e.g., B − R vs.”
• RECONSTRUCTING THE STELLAR MASS DISTRIBUTIONS OF GALAXIES USING S4G IRAC 3.6 AND 4.5 μm IMAGES. II. THE CONVERSION FROM LIGHT TO MASS (2014, methodology): “…typical uncertainties on total masses are 0.1-0.2 dex using global colors to assign the stellar M/L (Bell & de Jong 2001), although colors are expected to remain reliable in 1D for all but the most massive (and therefore dustiest; i.e. Dalcanton & Bernstein 2002) disks (MacArthur et al. 2004).”
• Galaxy Masses: A Review (2013, methodology): “This notion has been exploited with color-color diagrams involving optical and at least one NIR passbands to analyse the stellar populations of integrated stellar systems (e.g. de Jong 1996; Bell & de Jong 2000; Maraston et al. 2001; MacArthur et al. 2004; Roediger et al. 2011).”
• Broadband Imaging of a Large Sample of Irregular Galaxies (2005, background): “MacArthur et al. (2004) saw similar behavior among their spiral galaxy sample: The color gradients in the inner part and outer part sometimes had different slopes, and sometimes changed sign.”
• The formation and survival of discs in a ΛcDM universe (2008, background): “If more cold gas were left over, there would be a higher SFR at recent times, and later formation times for our discs, more similar to observed spirals (MacArthur et al. 2004).”
• The Origin and Evolution of the Mass-Metallicity Relationship for Galaxies: Results from Cosmological N-Body Simulations (2006, methodology): “As discussed in G07, at disk galaxies in our simulations fall on the Tully-Fisherz p 0 (TF) and baryonic TF relations (Giovanelli et al. 1997; McGaugh 2005) and the age-mass relation (MacArthur et al. 2004).”
• Stellar population gradients in galaxy discs from the CALIFA survey - The influence of bars (2014, background): “…gradients have mainly Article published by EDP Sciences A6, page 1 of 85 been investigated using colours (e.g., de Jong 1996; Peletier & Balcells 1996; Jansen et al. 2000; Bell & de Jong 2000; MacArthur et al. 2004; Taylor et al. 2005; Muñoz-Mateos et al. 2007, 2009; Prochaska et al. 2010).”
• RADIAL DISTRIBUTION OF STARS, GAS, AND DUST IN SINGS GALAXIES. II. DERIVED DUST PROPERTIES (2009, background): “…that the timescale of gas infall and conversion into stars increases with radius, leading to radial variations of the star formation history (SFH), which are in turn observationally translated into color gradients (de Jong 1996; Bell & de Jong 2000; MacArthur et al. 2004; Taylor et al. 2005).”
• A census of metals and baryons in stars in the local universe (2007, result): “However, while abundance gradients are observed in individual spiral galaxies, they are on average rather shallow and associated instead to larger age gradients (Bell & de Jong 2001; MacArthur et al. 2004), consistent with our findings.”
• Beyond Inside-Out Growth: Formation and Evolution of Disk Outskirts (2007, background): “The decrease in mean stellar age with radius is unsurprising if disks form inside-out, and such trends have indeed been observed (de Jong 1996; Bell & de Jong 2000; MacArthur et al. 2004; Muñoz-Mateos et al. 2007).”
• The ages and metallicities of galaxies in the local universe (2005, background): “Radial gradients in the properties of stellar populations are known to exist for both bulge-dominated (Henry & Worthey 1999; Saglia et al. 2000; Mehlert et al. 2003) and disc-dominated (Bell & de Jong 2000; MacArthur et al. 2004) galaxies.”
• Photometric scaling relations of lenticular and spiral galaxies (2010, result): “The close relationship between the colours of bulges and disks in spiral galaxies (Peletier & Balcells 1996; MacArthur et al. 2004; Cameron et al. 2009) is consistent with the idea that bulges in spirals were formed by secular evolution.”
• THE LUMINOSITY PROFILE AND STRUCTURAL PARAMETERS OF THE ANDROMEDA GALAXY (2011, background): “For instance, the latter may be biased by a recent frosting of star formation (e.g., de Jong & Lacey 2000; MacArthur et al. 2004).”